Thanks very much for taking the time to work on this column. It's been very informative. One point in response to a question answered on 8/25 is that there is a study on acute infection and IL-2 at NIH called HAIL-2. I'm not sure whether it's still open, however. The study is trying to test the hypothesis that IL-2 will help drain virus from resting T cells. While that seems doubtful, rumor has it the T cell response has been quite something in acutely infected patients on IL-2.

Response from Dr. Holodniy

You are correct about the acute infection and IL-2 study. What my answer failed to mention was that there is no long term clinical outcome data to determine if the addition of IL-2 is better than HIV treatment alone, or doing nothing and letting the immune system handle the virus by itself.

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